Could I Have This Dance? by Harry Kraus

Claire McCall has just started working as an intern at a university hospital, though she one day wants to be a full-fledged surgeon. When she arrives at her new job, she finds that life in the medical field isn't all that easy or fun. It's a daily struggle against the odds for survival.

Being an intern means leaving her fiancee behind in her hometown. She only sees him on rare visits, and this puts a huge strain on their already fragile relationship.

On top of that, her alcoholic father, Wally, has been behaving very strangely even though he's been off the bottle for several years now. Her mother doesn't know what to make of her husband's strange behavior. She's at a loss for what to do about him, so Wally's mother steps forward with a dark, hidden truth about their family tree that could shed light on his condition.

On top of that, Clay, Claire's twin brother, is following in the footsteps of his father as a drunkard. He's always getting into trouble and coming to Claire to bail him out.

If Claire's life isn't complicated enough already, she gets slapped with a lawsuit from an angry parent who claims she let his daughter die on her shift.

While it seems like this book is wrought with woe and tragedy, think again. These hardships are well-displaced throughout the book and are not consecutively introduced. They are woven into the realistic, everyday life of a medical intern who has struggles like everyone does.

Harry Kraus' number one asset in his books are his imperfect and believable characters. We are all imperfect human beings, so why not have our fictional characters be like us?

I believe it would be hard for any author to correctly handle all the issues I listed above in my summary in one book alone. There are more small ones besides the ones I mentioned, but I must say, Kraus handles them like the Elite author he is.

Kraus brings up an interesting issue with this book that not many of us outside the medical field think of: how Huntington's disease can be mistaken for alcoholism. Only Kraus' expert knowledge in the medical field could handle an issue like this.

The one drawback to this book that keeps it from being Kraus' usual five star rating are two things that worked out right in the end. Normally, I would let this slide, but they are unrealistic in the way that they play out.

All in all, Harry Kraus is one of the most unsung authors on the Christian market.

4.5 stars